


Unto the children go the sins

by Wanheda1999



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, F/M, Post-Canon, Trauma, canon con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:28:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27594817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wanheda1999/pseuds/Wanheda1999
Summary: The world burns. Life goes on.Unrelentingly, life goes on.
Relationships: Aang/Katara (Avatar), Sokka/Suki (Avatar)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 32





	Unto the children go the sins

**Author's Note:**

> This is a brief look into everyone post war. The kids aren't alright.

The world burns.

It always does, in the end. Some things need to burn.

The world burns, but it lives, scorched but still standing. Not unlike himself, Zuko thinks, touching his chest gingerly.

He doesn’t know where to go from here, but he imagines the trees don’t either. They are both starting from scratch, him and this world.

He wonders if that’s enough.

The crown is heavy on his forehead, the metal a stark reminder of the weight on his shoulders. Zuko wishes, not for the first time, that it was not him up here. But it had to be, just as much as the sun must rise in the morning.

The world burns, and the world lives.

Katara thinks of home. It does not feel like home, not anymore. She has been gone from the frozen tundra too long. She does not know how to stand there and be the girl she once was.

Gran-Gran will see what she has become. Katara has done bloody, violent things, and regrets none of it. It was in the name of peace, but her family will not see it that way.

Katara doesn’t know how to enjoy peace. Every muscle in her is always tense, ready to spring, to attack. She cannot sit through the coronation parties without her hand on her waterskin, always ready for a potential threat that never comes.

Home- what good is home?

Her home is blood and ice, the water as it is ripped out of flowers, blood in other’s bodies bending to her will.

Her home is the battlefield. She does not know who to be without it.

Katara prayed for peace for so long she never stopped to consider what it would feel like. She didn’t expect peace to hurt.

There is so little of who she used to be left.

Sokka will be there for them, she knows. She is leaving her family in good hands, hands she has trusted through life and death.

The tundra holds nothing she can have, not anymore.

Toph does not cry, as a rule. Crying is for softies, like Sokka, who had sobbed throughout the ceremony. Toph doesn’t need that. But as she watches Sokka and Katara embrace their father, she turns, a bitter taste in her mouth.

Not that she can’t see it all the same, not facing them.

Toph thinks of Zuko, but flicks her mind to Mai, who she can feel is hanging off him like a lifeline.

Now Katara has left her father, running into Aang’s arms as he effortlessly catches her. They squeal with happiness as they kiss, and something in Toph hardens. Suki will go back with her warriors, back to her home, and Sokka will go back to the South pole. Katara and Aang will go who-knows-where, but they will go together. And Zuko will rule a country, mostly, but not completely, alone.

Toph has nowhere to go.

She is a disgrace to her family, brutal and uncompromising next to their fine china.

If a tear drops into the dirt, no one sees. Toph brushes her feet over it, concealing the small wet patch.

She sniffs, and makes a joke.

Aang hurts. His body still aches from his fight with the firelord, but that does not bother him. His mind is abuzz, wondering if he should’ve done something different.

The monks had told him that you must let your choices go, or else they will consume you as easily as a forest fire does.

But the monks aren’t here. They are dead, slaughtered by an army he was never there for.

Gyatso was long gone, and Aang had never known. Hadn’t been there with him in his last moments to comfort him, or help him.

Not for the first time Aang wonders what the monks would think of who he’s become.

Would they be proud? Or horrified?

The wind is his only answer.

Sokka dreams of a different ending. He knows they won, he can feel it in his broken leg, still just beginning to heal. But his mind never sleeps, simply figuring out what could’ve gone wrong at every step.

A wrong jump there, a bad feint there, and they lose.

They lose, and Toph slips from his fingers as Suki lies shattered somewhere far away. Zuko never wakes up, and Mai and Ty Lee rot in prison.

Aang burns.

Sokka doesn’t sleep much these days. He waits urgently to go home, to be in the comfort of something familiar, to stop obsessing over battle plans long completed.

The cold will wake him.

He does not how to say it to Suki, but he never has to. She knows, and simply gives him a kiss goodbye.

“Make sure to visit.” She smiles as she heads off.

Sokka doesn’t reply.

Suki will not talk about her time in prison. She would rather die than talk, and that phrase has all too often come tumbling out of her lips.

Sokka does not ask, and she does not answer.

Suki’s hands shake whenever She sees red brick, or a certain kind of dagger. Sokka simply guides her away and distracts her knowingly.

He is too good to her, she thinks.

But she sees the way his mouth creases downward and wonders if she will be able to hold on to him.

“Make sure to visit.”

He doesn’t answer, and she didn’t expect him to.

Somewhere, a body rests below a lake.

Mai grabs on to Zuko as if she might never let go. She doesn’t want to.

Zuko is the only thing in this world she had any faith in.

Zuko always comes back, but each time he leaves it still hurts. His meetings are long and arduous, and Mai makes sure to not let her thoughts get to her while she’s in his company. It wouldn’t be fair to him.

So she puts on a mask she wears far too well, and pretends.

But at night, in the cold sheets, she cries.

Ty Lee is fine.

She has her new friends, the Kyoshi Warriors, and the island is beautiful. People are lovely, and she is happy.

She hears the whispers, of course, in the corners of the halls wear she shouldn’t be able to. But hear Ty Lee does- you don’t grow up in the fire nation court without these sorts of skills.

Their eyes burn into her souls. A brave one, older than her, points her chin upward.

“What are you running from?”

Ty Lee is not running from anything.

If you tell yourself that enough times, it will be true.

She’s not sure what she would’ve changed, truly. Nothing. Saving Mai had been worth the price. Worth everything she had.

There was never a winning scenario.

She’s not running, she argues in her head. She is coping. There’s a difference.

Ty Lee often wonders at the fact that she is still breathing. She had made her choice thinking death would be the result.

_Would you have made it again if you knew you had to live with it?_

Somewhere, she knows flames burn blue. Until she dies, she will never get over the look of betrayal that had graced Azula’s face.

I’m sorry, she thinks. But she’s not.

Ty Lee trains harder. Runs faster, lifts more, sleeps less.

_What are you running from?_

Azula is tired. Most days she doesn’t even feel like Azula, but that is the name she has to bear.

If people call her that, it must be true.

So she bears her teeth and her fire in order to try to be her, knowing that’s what Azula would do. But she is so tired, and no one comes to visit her anymore. Not since the fourth time she tried to kill the firelord. It brings her no joy, only sadness that she has pushed away everyone.

Azula is given her meals through a slot on the door, having made herself too dangerous for them to risk anything else. They do not respect her anymore, which she thinks should make her angry.

She thinks Azula would try to plan an escape, but she cannot muster up energy to do so. She doesn’t want to escape.

She doesn’t want to be Azula.

Not-Azula sits, and thinks about what she wants.

She doesn’t know. But it’s not this, not anymore.

The world burns. Life goes on.

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know your thoughts down below!


End file.
